"Mummy" director unwraps new "Tarzan"

LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) - The director of the
first two "Mummy" movies is taking a swing at Tarzan.

Stephen Sommers is in negotiations with Warner Bros. to
bring a new version of the classic Edgar Rice Burroughs
creation "Tarzan, Lord of the Apes," to the big screen.

The project was first announced two years ago with
Guillermo del Toro attached to direct. But Sommers will get his
shot now that Del Toro is committed to a four-year stint
choreographing dwarves in New Zealand for the "Hobbit" movies.

Over the decades, Tarzan has come in for any number of epic
treatments, from John Derek's 1981 Jane-driven "Tarzan, the Ape
Man," to the 1984 drama "Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan, Lord
of the Apes," which famously earned pseudonymous screenwriter
Robert Towne's dog, P.H. Vazak, an Oscar nomination. Disney
released its take on the jungle king in 1999, replete with an
incongruous (but Oscar-winning) Phil Collins soundtrack.

Sommers and the project's screenwriter, Stu Beattie
("Collateral"), are developing an entirely new approach, though
more details beyond that are being kept under wraps tighter
than Tarzan's loincloth.

With the "Mummy" movies, "The Scorpion King" and "Van
Helsing," Sommers has become a connoisseur of the big-budget,
effects-driven spectacle. He recently finished shooting "G.I.
Joe: Rise of Cobra," which Paramount will release next summer.